Aerosmith's "Get A Grip" (1993): A Brief History

<v Speaker 1>All Right, everybody, welcome to the Shirley You Can't Be
<v Speaker 1>Serious Podcast. We are here today to discuss two great
<v Speaker 1>albums from the nineties. These are former seventies rock stars
<v Speaker 1>who are regaining their crown as being the godfathers of
<v Speaker 1>hard rock. But before we do, do you have got
<v Speaker 1>a question for you?
<v Speaker 2>Yes?
<v Speaker 1>What does Garth Brooks, ace Ventura, Wayne and Garth and
<v Speaker 1>Batgirl have in common?
<v Speaker 3>I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>We're gonna get in it today when we talk about
<v Speaker 1>Aerosmith get a Grip album.
<v Speaker 3>All Right, I'm ready to see you tie all of
<v Speaker 3>those crazy random things together.
<v Speaker 1>Hang with me on this because it's going to be amazing.
<v Speaker 3>This episode, these two episodes that we've got are going
<v Speaker 3>to be fantastic because, as you mentioned, these two groups
<v Speaker 3>guys were icons in the seventies drugs and life events,
<v Speaker 3>and they fell apart in the eighties and then they
<v Speaker 3>revvd back up and here we are talking about the
<v Speaker 3>albums of the nineteen nineties that blew our doors off.
<v Speaker 1>Drugs and bats and spilled milk. The stories are going
<v Speaker 1>to be amazing with these guys.
<v Speaker 3>Well, let's jump into it.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, okay, So we begin in New York in nineteen
<v Speaker 4>forty eight, where a young Stephen Victor Tallarico was born.
<v Speaker 3>So he started life living under piano. His dad was
<v Speaker 3>a classical, classically trained musician, played with big bands, just
<v Speaker 3>like the Van Halen brothers. Dad John played with big bands.
<v Speaker 3>So he grew up his first years of life being
<v Speaker 3>surrounded by the sounds of the piano. And as he
<v Speaker 3>grew up, as you can imagine from the way he looks,
<v Speaker 3>he got made fun of a lot when he was
<v Speaker 3>a kid.
<v Speaker 1>Kind of skinny, big lips.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, And so as a way to combat that, he
<v Speaker 3>decided to start playing the drums. And he realized, hey,
<v Speaker 3>when I get on the stage in the cafeteria, the
<v Speaker 3>girls that were running away from me are now walking
<v Speaker 3>my way. But yes, thank you, thank you very much.
<v Speaker 3>I'll be here all night. Tip your waitress. So he
<v Speaker 3>gets this band together, and the band's name is Chain Reaction,
<v Speaker 3>Chain Reaction, and Chain Reaction actually does pretty well. They
<v Speaker 3>record some albums. They've got some songs on the jukebox, I.
<v Speaker 1>Mean, like legitimate records on the jukebox.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, And a couple of guys that are interested in
<v Speaker 3>this band are Anthony Joseph Peare I don't know how
<v Speaker 3>to pronounce that last name. I'm glad he went with Perry. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>and Tom Hamilton Yeah, when they became interested. They were
<v Speaker 3>at that point too young to get in the clubs
<v Speaker 3>that Steven was playing in. So Joe and Tom decide, Hey,
<v Speaker 3>we're gonna put our own band together. They call their
<v Speaker 3>band the jam Band.
<v Speaker 1>The jam band.
<v Speaker 3>Because they're not the creative members of this quintet.
<v Speaker 1>That is as boring as Joe Perry is.
<v Speaker 3>Uh Joe Perry. Now, Joe Perry strikes me as the
<v Speaker 3>guy that when you're like, hey, how's it going, that
<v Speaker 3>he's like yeah, and he starts to tell you how
<v Speaker 3>it's actually going, and it's not interesting, and you're like,
<v Speaker 3>I was really just making small talk. I don't really
<v Speaker 3>care about your life.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, he's a very serious looking guy. He does look
<v Speaker 1>like a rockstar though, I mean he's oh.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, well he's got the abs. I mean he's a
<v Speaker 3>mad Yes. Yes, Jed Adams at forty eight. In nineteen
<v Speaker 3>sixty nine, Steven's band had broken up and he was
<v Speaker 3>back at home mowing his grass. Joe Perry is the
<v Speaker 3>guy who pulls up in the MG and says, hey,
<v Speaker 3>how you doing. Steven says, I haven't seen you in
<v Speaker 3>a while. Joe says, hey me, some of the boys
<v Speaker 3>are play at the barn tonight. What are you doing.
<v Speaker 3>Steven says nothing, Maybe I'll come see you, And as
<v Speaker 3>Joe is about to drive off, Stephen says, hey, maybe
<v Speaker 3>we'll play together sometime.
<v Speaker 1>Pretty important sentence in the history of rock and roll
<v Speaker 1>right there, right.
<v Speaker 3>So he goes to the show that night and he
<v Speaker 3>listens to them play and he thinks they're awful, and
<v Speaker 3>so he is about to get up and leave, and
<v Speaker 3>then they start playing a song that starts out well.
<v Speaker 2>If you want to rock, and it's slow and it's sexy,
<v Speaker 2>and Stephen is transfix He is amazed at the dynamics
<v Speaker 2>of this song.
<v Speaker 3>He's thinking to himself, Oh my gosh, the classical music
<v Speaker 3>of my dad and my lyrics and this type of
<v Speaker 3>sexy song. We could actually make something out of this. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>you know a song as they were playing, what is it? Okay?
<v Speaker 3>So it's a song that we talked about in the
<v Speaker 3>skid Row episode, kind of song that we talked about
<v Speaker 3>in the Motley Crue episode. Because they both have songs
<v Speaker 3>on their albums that have the same name, but it's
<v Speaker 3>not a Motley Crue song, and it's not a skid
<v Speaker 3>Row song. It's a Fleetwood Max song. You call it
<v Speaker 3>Rattlesnake Shake nice.
<v Speaker 1>I did not know.
<v Speaker 3>That's why I am here, man. I am here to
<v Speaker 3>give you information that will blow your mind.
<v Speaker 1>You're blowing my mind.
<v Speaker 3>Steve and Joe and Tom move out to Boston in
<v Speaker 3>nineteen seventy just to try to put something together. They
<v Speaker 3>come across this drummer named Joey Kramer, and they think, man,
<v Speaker 3>if we could get this guy, we're gonna be set.
<v Speaker 3>They come across another guy who's a really good guitarist
<v Speaker 3>named Brad Whitford.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Brad is one of those guys. I mean, he
<v Speaker 1>looks like Santa Claus right right, He's like a long
<v Speaker 1>white beard, and he looks so disinterested in all those videos.
<v Speaker 3>I don't you look at that group and you're like,
<v Speaker 3>how did this guy sneak into the band? It's like,
<v Speaker 3>did they get is one of the guys sick?
<v Speaker 1>Did they get a lady?
<v Speaker 3>Did they get a roadie to come in here and
<v Speaker 3>play guitar?
<v Speaker 1>We bring in more hot girls. Brad's not smiling yet.
<v Speaker 3>He's got dry, krusty, banged hair. But he's a good guitarist.
<v Speaker 3>He's a great guitarist and one of the members of
<v Speaker 3>the greatest rock and roll band of all time.
<v Speaker 2>That's right.
<v Speaker 3>So Joey Kramer came up with the name of the band. Hey,
<v Speaker 3>what do you think about Aerosmith. Yeah, So they start playing.
<v Speaker 3>They start rocking out Boston so hard that some music
<v Speaker 3>managers named Steven Lever and David Krebs notice them and
<v Speaker 3>they're like, we got to put on a show for
<v Speaker 3>these guys. So they do this showcase show for them
<v Speaker 3>in October of nineteen seventy one. If you're paying attention,
<v Speaker 3>that's fifty years ago. Wow.
<v Speaker 1>Incredible.
<v Speaker 3>Wow. They bring in the president of Columbia Records, mister
<v Speaker 3>Clive Davis, who instantly fell in love. As a matter
<v Speaker 3>of fact, he came down and said, I'm gonna make
<v Speaker 3>you a star that every rock's.
<v Speaker 1>Singer wants to hear in the star.
<v Speaker 3>Could you bring out the standard rich and famous contract?
<v Speaker 1>What are we gonna do them movie?
<v Speaker 3>Oh my gosh, we need to Okay. So the first
<v Speaker 3>success that they have is a song off their debut album,
<v Speaker 3>also called Aerosmith. It came from a melody that Steven
<v Speaker 3>Tyler had written back when he was only seventeen years old,
<v Speaker 3>and the name of the song is dream On. Oh
<v Speaker 3>my gosh, when I went to the pizza inn as
<v Speaker 3>a young kid, and I mean the pizza parlor that
<v Speaker 3>had the video good the pizza parlor that had the
<v Speaker 3>little TVs, the little black and white TVs that you
<v Speaker 3>could put a quarter in and watch TV while you
<v Speaker 3>ate your pizza.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 3>But on the jukebox, you were going to have another
<v Speaker 3>one Bites the Dust or We Will Rock You. You
<v Speaker 3>were going to have another Brick in the Wall or money,
<v Speaker 3>and you were going to have dream On.
<v Speaker 1>It's one of the most iconic rock songs of all
<v Speaker 1>time and probably the grandfather of every Power ballad that's ever.
<v Speaker 3>Been made, arguably. And then I would get done with
<v Speaker 3>my one piece of pizza and say, can I go
<v Speaker 3>play Miss pac Man.
<v Speaker 1>That's a good night right there?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, dream On and Miss pac Man Little Tabletop.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I want to take just a brief moment and
<v Speaker 1>mention there is a version of dream On that is
<v Speaker 1>on the Last Action Hero soundtrack that came out in
<v Speaker 1>ninety three. It's a live version that's actually conducted by
<v Speaker 1>Michael Kahman, the same guy who did the music for
<v Speaker 1>Leith the Weapon and Die Harden, Highlander, Highlander, countless movies.
<v Speaker 1>And it is an amazing version of dream.
<v Speaker 3>On, one of their most iconic songs. However, it's not
<v Speaker 3>a big success.
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy.
<v Speaker 3>The album barely sold over one hundred thousand. How does
<v Speaker 3>that happen? I don't know, but with a showing that poor,
<v Speaker 3>the record label said, your next album better be a
<v Speaker 3>major success or you're going to be done. And so
<v Speaker 3>they went back in the recording studio with producer Jack
<v Speaker 3>Douglas and a copious amount of cocaine, and they produced
<v Speaker 3>their second album called Get Your Wings Nice nineteen seventy four.
<v Speaker 3>Get Your Wings went gold. But at this point the
<v Speaker 3>animosity starts to begin and build between the key members
<v Speaker 3>of the band, the Toxic Twins Joe and Steve Yes.
<v Speaker 3>Because of his intrusive and strong willed girlfriend and ultimately wife,
<v Speaker 3>Joe Perry started spending less and less time with the
<v Speaker 3>band and more and more time with Alyssa. Stephn Tyler
<v Speaker 3>said he didn't really down to write a song about her,
<v Speaker 3>but you're going to recognize a lyric that he said
<v Speaker 3>is unquestionably referring to her.
<v Speaker 1>Talking about things that nobody cares.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so that lyric was inspired by Alyssa Perry. The
<v Speaker 3>next album that they recorded was Toys in the Attic.
<v Speaker 3>It's the same story that we've told multiple times. Now
<v Speaker 3>we're almost done with the album.
<v Speaker 1>It's the same old song and dance.
<v Speaker 3>Way to go. They're almost done. They don't quite have
<v Speaker 3>a hit song on the album yet. Joe Perry is
<v Speaker 3>fiddling around on the guitar and comes up with this
<v Speaker 3>little thing that goes and then Steven Tyler drummer, yes,
<v Speaker 3>sits down and it's like and suddenly they can tell
<v Speaker 3>this song is a hit. All they need are lyrics.
<v Speaker 3>Where are the lyrics? We can't think of the lay're
<v Speaker 3>pulling their hair out.
<v Speaker 1>Come on words, words, words, words.
<v Speaker 3>Unfortunately, they weren't coming right. And so after several hours
<v Speaker 3>of I'm about ready to tear my hair out, can
<v Speaker 3>we do some more cocaine, Jack Douglas is like, guys,
<v Speaker 3>just take a break, you know, walk across the street,
<v Speaker 3>watch a movie. It'll be fine. Well, the movie that
<v Speaker 3>happened to be playing across the street, this movie.
<v Speaker 1>Called Young Frankenstein.
<v Speaker 3>And so they go in and they laugh their butts off,
<v Speaker 3>specifically at one line by Marty Feldman, this no this way.
<v Speaker 2>Yes.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, this song was almost called abby Normal.
<v Speaker 3>This song was almost called what Knockers? Oh my gosh. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>So the song walk the Way was born at a
<v Speaker 3>magical moment from the movie Young.
<v Speaker 1>Frankly, that's really cool. What a great story.
<v Speaker 3>So another cool story around this time, the band was
<v Speaker 3>driving to one of their gigs together and they get
<v Speaker 3>pulled over by a police car and the officer finds
<v Speaker 3>one seed as seed, not even multiple seeds, but as
<v Speaker 3>seed of marijuana, and handcuffs everybody and takes them all
<v Speaker 3>down to the station. And so they're sitting there and
<v Speaker 3>you're thinking, well, what story about there's a seed? I mean,
<v Speaker 3>what are you gonna do with a seed? Right? Well,
<v Speaker 3>the problem is is that Brad Whitford had two bags
<v Speaker 3>of marijuana inside his pants. What if your drugs were
<v Speaker 3>on fire?
<v Speaker 1>Impossible, sir. They're in Whitford's underwear.
<v Speaker 3>So they're sitting there waiting, knowing that the bags of
<v Speaker 3>marijuana are just in his pants, and Stephen Tyler looks
<v Speaker 3>and sees that the door next to them is open,
<v Speaker 3>and the room that it goes into is dark and
<v Speaker 3>so he grabs the marijuana bags, throws them into this
<v Speaker 3>empty room, and the officer walks in right after it happens,
<v Speaker 3>doesn't know what's happened, and they have managed to make
<v Speaker 3>it to the show in time.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 3>So Walk this Way finds its way into the top ten.
<v Speaker 3>So they start recording their next album, Rocks.
<v Speaker 1>You know, before you go any further, we did a
<v Speaker 1>pull on our Facebook page and on our Twitter Pageah,
<v Speaker 1>we just put it out there and we said, what's
<v Speaker 1>your favorite Aerosmith album of all time? Toys in the
<v Speaker 1>Attic really was the overwhelming favorite by most people, but
<v Speaker 1>Rocks kind of finished second.
<v Speaker 3>Rocks has been cited as the inspiration to start playing
<v Speaker 3>music by Nicky six, Slash, James Hetfield, Kurt Cobain, and
<v Speaker 3>according to one story Eddie Van Halen's that they got
<v Speaker 3>their big break by touring the LA clubs playing Arismith songs. Now,
<v Speaker 3>of course that story came from Joe Perry, so you
<v Speaker 3>don't know how good that story is. But anyway, yes,
<v Speaker 3>so Rocks was a huge inspiration to a lot of folks.
<v Speaker 3>So at this point they're headlining tours and they are
<v Speaker 3>filling up stadiums now. Also during this time, Stephen Tyler
<v Speaker 3>starts dating a playboy model named Bebby Buell, and he
<v Speaker 3>takes her to Germany with them on tour and they
<v Speaker 3>have a nice little romance for about two and a
<v Speaker 3>half weeks, and then they're done and she goes back home.
<v Speaker 3>But then a few months after that, he finds out
<v Speaker 3>that she's pregnant and he's not sure if the baby
<v Speaker 3>is his or not. And she's rekindled her relationship with
<v Speaker 3>another rock musician named Todd Rundgren, and she doesn't want
<v Speaker 3>the baby to be Stephen Tyler's, so she and Todd
<v Speaker 3>raise Live as their own Ye Live, And not surprisingly,
<v Speaker 3>Steven Tyler doesn't just go try to find his hardest.
<v Speaker 3>He's not in the best spot in his life to
<v Speaker 3>go be a dad.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, cocaine is more of his thing at that moment.
<v Speaker 3>Right by the way, Todd Runger lives surrogate dad for
<v Speaker 3>the first you know, half of her life. Yeah. Is
<v Speaker 3>not only a musician, he was producer as well. He
<v Speaker 3>produced Straight Up by Bad Finger, He produced We're an
<v Speaker 3>American Band by Grand Funk Railroad. He produced New York Dolls,
<v Speaker 3>by New York Dolls, Bat Out of Hell by Meat Loaf,
<v Speaker 3>and this Are you ready? Yes, all right? In nineteen
<v Speaker 3>eighty one, he created the first color graphic tablet software
<v Speaker 3>for personal computers that was licensed to Apple, called the
<v Speaker 3>Utopia Graphic Tablet System. So, just to be clear here,
<v Speaker 3>Todd Runner Live Tyler's step dad, was the guy who
<v Speaker 3>created what would ultimately become the iPhone and the iPad.
<v Speaker 1>That's freaking amazing.
<v Speaker 3>That's crazy.
<v Speaker 1>You're blowing my mind.
<v Speaker 3>I'm so glad you're blowing my mind. Also, around this time,
<v Speaker 3>March of nineteen seventy seven, they start recording Draw the Line.
<v Speaker 3>At this point, their drug use and psychotic behavior had
<v Speaker 3>become so far gone that they were no longer musicians
<v Speaker 3>who did drugs. They were drug addicts who occasionally played music.
<v Speaker 3>And so at this point their live performances really started
<v Speaker 3>to suffer. And it wasn't because they were drugged out
<v Speaker 3>that the performances were bad. It was when they weren't
<v Speaker 3>drugged out. They had become such addicts that when they
<v Speaker 3>weren't on drugs, they dope sick. Yeah, they were dope sick,
<v Speaker 3>and they couldn't they couldn't put on a good stage show,
<v Speaker 3>and the animosity between Joe and Stephen like climax at
<v Speaker 3>this point, and it was largely over drugs, Like Stephen
<v Speaker 3>would have drug and Joe would be like, can I
<v Speaker 3>have some drugs? And Steve would be like, no, they're
<v Speaker 3>my drugs. Right, So that's that's the way you get
<v Speaker 3>How can you be such a hateful friend not to
<v Speaker 3>give me some of your death drugs? Okay? So then,
<v Speaker 3>as bad as it was, things got worse when Steven
<v Speaker 3>started dating a friend of Alyssa Perry, Joe's wife named
<v Speaker 3>Sirrenda Fox, right, not Samantha Fox, not Samantha Fox, but
<v Speaker 3>both Foxes. Yes, And he did start dating her despite
<v Speaker 3>the fact that she was married at the time to
<v Speaker 3>another musicians. Okay, she had set her sights on him,
<v Speaker 3>and I guess forgotten that she had, you know, sworn
<v Speaker 3>an oath to stay true to somebody else. And she
<v Speaker 3>started to get more and more attention. And because of
<v Speaker 3>the attention that she was getting, Alissa was no longer
<v Speaker 3>her friend. She was her friend of me. Yep, she
<v Speaker 3>was just her enemy. Actually, they just she started to
<v Speaker 3>hate her. And this this angry Alyssa made Steven Tyler
<v Speaker 3>so happy that he married, Sir.
<v Speaker 1>I know what, I'll really drive it crazy.
<v Speaker 3>We'll get married. Yeah. So at this point, all of
<v Speaker 3>the wives would sit backstage and just despise each other,
<v Speaker 3>and at some point, a glass of milk is thrown.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, Alyssa Perry throws a glass of milk at Brad
<v Speaker 1>Whitford's wife, and that's when it. The whole thing blows
<v Speaker 1>up and literally Aerosmith breaks up over a glass of
<v Speaker 1>spilled milk.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. So Alyssa was the one who threw the glass
<v Speaker 3>of milk. But Joe is the one who comes to
<v Speaker 3>the band and says, I've had enough, maybe I should
<v Speaker 3>just split. Their only response is to nod in agreement. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So Joe went out on his own and did the
<v Speaker 3>Joe Perry Project, you know, the big famous Joe Perry Project.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah no, no, I'm not really no, right, So Aerosmith
<v Speaker 3>replaced him as a guitarist. But Magic's Gone. The album
<v Speaker 3>that came out after that was Rocking a hard place.
<v Speaker 3>It took them over two years to put that album together,
<v Speaker 3>and at that point Brad Whitford had decided I'm tired
<v Speaker 3>of waiting for it, and he quit the band, and
<v Speaker 3>he put together his own band, which of course is
<v Speaker 3>big and famous.
<v Speaker 1>No no, no, no, no, no one.
<v Speaker 3>Either, all right, So they replaced him with Rick de Fay,
<v Speaker 3>and the band that was once filling stadiums could now
<v Speaker 3>no longer fill like a thousand seat clubs.
<v Speaker 1>While they were playing, you could hear people yelling where's Joe.
<v Speaker 1>I saw another deal where Steven Tyler was dopsic on
<v Speaker 1>stage and he goes to lean on I think Tom Hamilton,
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, and Tom Hamilton's like, dude, get off me,
<v Speaker 1>and it gives him kind of a little shove and
<v Speaker 1>Steven Tyler goes down and can't get up. Literally, he's
<v Speaker 1>fallen and can't get up. That's just disastrous.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. And so it's at this point that Rick Defey,
<v Speaker 3>the replacement guitarist that they had brought on, says the
<v Speaker 3>obvious thing, you guys need to get Joe back in
<v Speaker 3>the band, right. Not surprisingly, Joe's band was not doing
<v Speaker 3>so great at this time either. He needed money to
<v Speaker 3>despite the fact that he was a world famous musician.
<v Speaker 3>Since his management took half of the money that the
<v Speaker 3>band made, he had no more money left, and so
<v Speaker 3>he sold his nineteen fifty nine Les Paul. That's the
<v Speaker 3>guitar that had the Dennetteananena riff coming off of it.
<v Speaker 3>He's like, so done with that band, I don't care.
<v Speaker 3>A few years later, he's like, I missed that guitar.
<v Speaker 3>I wonder if I can find that guitar. And at
<v Speaker 3>this point he's got people and so it puts, you know,
<v Speaker 3>puts the feelers out, and somebody gives him a call
<v Speaker 3>and says, hey, check out the latest spread and Guitar World.
<v Speaker 3>He opens it up and it is a guitar collection
<v Speaker 3>that has his nineteen fifty nine Les Paul right in
<v Speaker 3>the middle of it. And whose guitar collection is it?
<v Speaker 1>Slash of Guns N' Roses.
<v Speaker 3>And so he gives Slash a call and he's like
<v Speaker 3>hey man, and he's like, oh, hey Joe. He's excited.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, we know, like Joe's the inspiration for him
<v Speaker 3>getting into music right right, and so he's like, so
<v Speaker 3>you've got my guitar and Slash is like, oh my gosh,
<v Speaker 3>please don't ask me what you're going to ask. Please
<v Speaker 3>do not say what you're going to say. And he's like, man,
<v Speaker 3>I'd really love to have that. He's like dogs He's like, man,
<v Speaker 3>I can't. I can't part with this. This is like
<v Speaker 3>the jewel of my collection. And Joe's like, okay, man,
<v Speaker 3>just think about it and keeps calling him every once
<v Speaker 3>in a while to kind of hit him up about it,
<v Speaker 3>and eventually Slash stops taking Joe Perry's phone.
<v Speaker 1>Call your Heroes on the line again, tell him I'm
<v Speaker 1>not here.
<v Speaker 3>So Joe realizes that he's been cut off, and so
<v Speaker 3>he gets he makes contact with him. He's like, man,
<v Speaker 3>I don't want to split up our friendship over this.
<v Speaker 3>I will never say another word to you about my guitar. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>my that I love my baby.
<v Speaker 1>I will not bring up my baby anymore.
<v Speaker 3>And so he lets it go. And then a couple
<v Speaker 3>years later, on his fiftieth birthday, he opens a present
<v Speaker 3>from Slash and it's his nineteen fifty nine lasts. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>that is awesome. So both Steven and Joe find new
<v Speaker 3>stable spouses at this point. Yeah, they both are good
<v Speaker 3>about helping them get their act back together, and ultimately,
<v Speaker 3>in March of nineteen eighty four, they get the band
<v Speaker 3>back together. Yeah, they change management, the change record labels.
<v Speaker 3>The next album that they had was called Done with mirrors.
<v Speaker 3>The drug use was still heavy, the inability to get
<v Speaker 3>things done was still there, and so they were still
<v Speaker 3>struggling for a couple of years. Yeah, until a moment
<v Speaker 3>of magic. In March of nineteen eighty six. They get
<v Speaker 3>a call from mister Rick. And if you don't know
<v Speaker 3>who Rick Rubin is, his album production is so voluminous
<v Speaker 3>that I couldn't even begin to scratch the surface. He
<v Speaker 3>is an icon and he says, I'd like to re
<v Speaker 3>record one of your biggest hits with a rap group
<v Speaker 3>called Run DMC.
<v Speaker 1>This is a huge momentous event, not just in Aerosmith history,
<v Speaker 1>but in rock and roll and hip hop history.
<v Speaker 3>Absolutely. To say that the mashup of these two bands
<v Speaker 3>is revolutionary is an understatement. Doctor Dre described it as
<v Speaker 3>a breakthrough moment because it was the first time hip
<v Speaker 3>hop was getting played on MTV. It's really cool moment, right.
<v Speaker 3>It brought them back into my mind. I remember as
<v Speaker 3>a little kid here in dream On on the radio
<v Speaker 3>and some of those other songs, but they were absent
<v Speaker 3>from my developmental years for news. But then in eighty
<v Speaker 3>six when that video came out, I was like, Oh,
<v Speaker 3>I know these guys where do I know these guys
<v Speaker 3>from And that's kind of the way that everybody else reacted. Absolutely,
<v Speaker 3>So suddenly they have got an appeal for a whole
<v Speaker 3>brand new audience, and so they've got new management who says,
<v Speaker 3>this is our moment, this is our moment to grab.
<v Speaker 3>We can get a new audience from this MTV craze.
<v Speaker 3>We just have to fix the drug prop yep and
<v Speaker 3>so that's that's what they do. They force them into
<v Speaker 3>rehab and it takes five years a lot of hard work,
<v Speaker 3>but eventually all five members of the band are sobered together.
<v Speaker 3>And during that time, Steven Tyler finds out that he
<v Speaker 3>has a nine year old daughter named liv.
<v Speaker 1>Imagine we're going to talk about her here in just
<v Speaker 1>a few minutes.
<v Speaker 3>That'd be good.
<v Speaker 1>So Permanent Vacation comes out in eighty seven. Desmond Child
<v Speaker 1>is brought in as an outside rider to help them
<v Speaker 1>with some of these songs.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Permanent Vacation was their first drug free album, and
<v Speaker 3>it's fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's a great one.
<v Speaker 3>It was during that time that they mistook Vince Neil
<v Speaker 3>as a hot girl in a bar, and then not
<v Speaker 3>too long after that they their management convinced them to
<v Speaker 3>bring in a songwriting partner, Desmond Child, we talked about
<v Speaker 3>in our bon Jovi episode. Desmond Child is you know
<v Speaker 3>who's Desmond Child at this point, right? The guy just
<v Speaker 3>a guy. So you wrote a few bon Jovi songs.
<v Speaker 3>Good for you? Like literally, this is you all happening
<v Speaker 3>at the same time. And so he asserts himself quite nicely.
<v Speaker 3>He comes in. They're playing a song and they've got
<v Speaker 3>this lyric that they're working.
<v Speaker 1>With CUsing for the ladies.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and so they say what do you think and
<v Speaker 3>Desmond Child says, I think that sounds like and they're like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>thank you, okay, I appreciate that. Yeah, and so he's like, well,
<v Speaker 3>I got my work cut out for me, and they're like,
<v Speaker 3>a the who whah who flow. So let us tell
<v Speaker 3>you what the original lyric was. How about the line
<v Speaker 3>dude looks like a lady? And Desmond Child goes, now
<v Speaker 3>you've got.
<v Speaker 1>To hit yeah, yeah, that's fantastic.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, And so he comes up with the first line.
<v Speaker 1>Cruising two a bar on the shore.
<v Speaker 3>And Steven Tyler follows it with the second line, her
<v Speaker 3>picture grates the grime on the door, and suddenly Stephen
<v Speaker 3>Tyler realized he did not have to do so much
<v Speaker 3>hard work writing songs.
<v Speaker 1>It's fantastic.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, it's a great song. Someday we need to do
<v Speaker 3>permanent vacation.
<v Speaker 1>I would love to do permanent vacation.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>After the dude looks like a lady, they released a
<v Speaker 1>song called Angel Yes, which is a power ballad, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>softer power ballad.
<v Speaker 3>Like it's not dream On, it's a it's a much softer,
<v Speaker 3>slow dance kind of song.
<v Speaker 1>It's on the Makeout List of nineteen eighty seven.
<v Speaker 3>And Tom Hamilton's like, I don't like this. This is
<v Speaker 3>this is not us. This song is wimpy and mushy,
<v Speaker 3>and I don't like it. This is we're rockers. I
<v Speaker 3>don't know what this is happening. And then literally moments later,
<v Speaker 3>some dudes like in leather jackets with long beards and
<v Speaker 3>biker tattoos go, oh, man, Angel love the song. You
<v Speaker 3>guys could play that anytime, and he's like, well, I
<v Speaker 3>goes my argument. We'll keep writing those kind of songs,
<v Speaker 3>and that's kind of become their thing.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, we're lucky he lost that argument, or we
<v Speaker 1>would be without some major Arismith.
<v Speaker 3>Songs after that, including their number one.
<v Speaker 1>I don't want to miss a thing of Armageddon.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. So after that they released Pump and their videos
<v Speaker 3>go to next level to say, okay, let's say that
<v Speaker 3>the videos and the songs might be described as slightly sexual. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Loving an elevator based on a true story and experienced
<v Speaker 3>by mister Steven Tyler himself. Yes, I'm not shocked when
<v Speaker 3>I heard thy right, they didn't push the stop button though.
<v Speaker 3>At some point in the midst of it all the
<v Speaker 3>doors opened up and people, you know, some family on vacation.
<v Speaker 1>We'll get the next week.
<v Speaker 3>So then in nineteen ninety three, they released the album
<v Speaker 3>that we are here to talk about today, Get a Grip.
<v Speaker 3>Get a Grip, So join us for that. Not next week,
<v Speaker 3>but just in a couple of days. It will be amazing,
<v Speaker 3>it will be crazy. We're gonna be living on the edge.
<v Speaker 3>You'll be laughing, you'll be crying. D get a grip.
<v Speaker 1>All right, We'll see you guys in two days.